Dedication
Formymother , whotaughtmecourage,gritandpower .
Contents
Cover Title Page
Copyright
Praise for Godkiller
Dedication
Map
Chapter One: Arren
Chapter Two: Skediceth
Chapter Three: Kissen
Chapter Four: Elogast
Chapter Five: Arren
Chapter Six: Kissen
Chapter Seven: Inara
Chapter Eight: Kissen
Chapter Nine: Elogast
Chapter Ten: Skediceth
Chapter Eleven: Kissen
Chapter Twelve: Elogast
Chapter Thirteen: Inara
Chapter Fourteen: Elogast
Chapter Fifteen: Kissen
Chapter Sixteen: Skediceth
Chapter Seventeen: Elogast
Chapter Eighteen: Inara
Chapter Nineteen: Kissen
Chapter Twenty: Arren
Chapter Twenty-One: Elogast
Chapter Twenty-Two: Elogast
Chapter Twenty-Three: Skediceth
Chapter Twenty-Four: Inara
Chapter Twenty-Five: Kissen
Chapter Twenty-Six: Elogast
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Skediceth
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Kissen
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Elogast
Chapter Thirty: Inara
Chapter Thirty-One: Elogast
Chapter Thirty-Two: Inara
Chapter Thirty-Three: Kissen
Chapter Thirty-Four: Elogast
Chapter Thirty-Five: Inara
Chapter Thirty-Six: Elogast
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Kissen
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Elogast
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Skediceth
Chapter Forty: Arren
Chapter Forty-One: Kissen
Chapter Forty-Two: Elogast
Chapter Forty-Three: Inara
Chapter Forty-Four: Kissen
Chapter Forty-Five: Skediceth
Chapter Forty-Six: Elogast
Chapter Forty-Seven: Inara
Chapter Forty-Eight: Skediceth
Chapter Forty-Nine: Elogast
Chapter Fifty: Kissen
Chapter Fifty-One: Arren
Chapter Fifty-Two: Inara
Chapter Fifty-Three: Skediceth
Chapter Fifty-Four: Elogast
Chapter Fifty-Five: Kissen
Chapter Fifty-Six: Inara
Chapter Fifty-Seven: Elogast
Chapter Fifty-Eight: Kissen
Chapter Fifty-Nine: Inara
Chapter Sixty: Elogast
Chapter Sixty-One: Inara
Chapter Sixty-Two: Elogast
Chapter Sixty-Three: Inara
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Also by Hannah Kaner About the Publisher
ARREN’S HEART SCREAMED
He fell back from the fireplace. The god in his chest was howling: Hseth!Hseth!Hseth!
‘Stop!’ Arren cried. He grappled with the tangle of twigs, moss and flame that filled the rift in his ribs. Fire licked the sides of his fingers, burning him.
Hestra, the god of hearths who lived where his heart had once beaten was usually quiescent, but now she shrieked the name of another. Hseth.The great Talician god of fire.
‘Please,’ said Arren. ‘Stop!’
She did not stop. Worse. Sparks ran down his stomach and landed on the floor. There, lint, straw, pine roots and tiny bits of bone sprouted, catching light in the fireplace where he had been kneeling. She was crawling out of his chest.
What had happened? They had been waiting for Hseth to return in glory, filling Arren with the power of the strongest fire deity to have ever existed, in exchange for the life of his friend.
Not a friend. Not anymore.
But Hseth had not returned, and neither had her promises. Arren’s god, Hestra, spilled out onto the hearthstone, dragging her heat and light from him and leaving a void of darkness. As she built herself outside of him, he fell back against a low table, gasping. First, she was a bud, a cocoon of twigs. Then the cocoon cracked open, splitting into the limbs of dried grass, moss and kindling. A face of branches and eyes of flame.
‘Hestra,’ he wheezed. With her gone from his chest, he could feel his blood cooling, the strain of his breaths. His death, it came at him like a wave, long held back by flame. ‘Please.’
In Blenraden, the morning sun had struck open the sky, but here in Sakre, in the far west of Middren, the windows were still thick with the grey before dawn. The only wakeful ones would be the guards outside his room or the folks in the kitchens. They must not see him like this. He had built himself up as a godslayer, a breaker of shrines. No one could know he needed a god to live.
Hestra did not heed him. He reached for her, but she stepped backwards into the fireplace and disappeared in a hiss of anger.
And he was left with nothing. Less than nothing. She had vowed to keep him alive, had entreated him to speak to Hseth and understand the will of a god, his potential. She had helped him betray every law he had ever made. In a moment, all of it was gone. Without a word, she had left him to die.
The whims of gods. As fickle as a false spring.
Arren had never been so easily turned. But look what it had earned him: in Hestra’s absence, the world grew loud. Gone was the crackling of his heart, the warm rushing of his blood. Instead, he could hear the snap of embers in the fire, the sparks that hissed
minutely as they died on the stones, the rain that thrashed against the window, thinning as the sky brightened. Most of all he could hear the desperate dredging of his lungs as they tried for air. It did no good, not without Hestra, his secret, his shame. Without her, he would be dead before the sun rose. All his hopes lost.
Help, he thought. Unbidden, his friend’s name crept into his mind. Helpme,Elogast.
Elogast was not coming. He was in the east. Betrayed and wounded. Betrayed by him.
Arren was alone. He had sacrificed his closest friend, his brother, his one remaining love, for the power to change the world, and it had gained him only a pathetic death in a locked room.
A tap at the door to his chambers. Soft, tentative at first. He couldn’t answer. Then knocking came harder.
‘Your majesty?’
The guards. They had heard.
‘There were noises? My king?’
They could not find out this secret. Not yet. They weren’t ready. The door shook on its hinges, the guard shaking the lock. Arren tried to drag himself upright.
‘Don’t … come in,’ he tried, but barely managed a croak of air. He fell on his side, knocking the table, and the compasses and writs he had spread across it clattered to the floor. His vision blurred. Hseth had promised him, promisedhim.Talicia and Middren, united as one, coast to coast claim of the Trade Sea. The beginnings of an empire, of indisputable love and power. He should have known their promises would come to nothing.
The door splintered, slamming back on its hinges and smashing into the wall hard enough to shake the dust from the tapestries. In came Knight Commander Peta, shoulder first. She drew her slender sword and cast around for an intruder, finding none. Just a mess of twigs, a crackling fire.
‘My king,’ she gasped in her alarm, dropping to her knees beside him. He struggled for air, for control, but he could not hide it now: no blood, no covering, just an open, empty wound. Peta’s eyes found the chasm in his chest, the darkness where death should be.
It had been years since the axe of the god of war had gone deep into his bones, ripping through his breastplate and cracking his ribs into pieces. The marks remained where the metal of his armour had made a mess of his skin, healing into dark red scarring threaded with Hestra’s smoke-script. That, a vivid black. A god’s promise.
‘Please,’ Arren whispered, though he did not know what he was asking for.
Peta’s face paled with horror, her hands hovering over his shoulders. Her eyes and mouth were lined by a life of hard living, her grey hair cropped, no-nonsense, close to her skull, and shining in the light that had crept through the dispersing clouds. She was upright and fierce, desperately loyal. One of the few aged generals who had not run in the worst days of the war, nor had she faltered at hanging would-be assassins from the gallows, one of them her own cousin. She had even passed his command to burn the Craier steadings to the ground. And he had lied to her.
‘My king, I … When?’ Her calloused hand hovered over the gaping space in his chest. When did this happen? How long had he lied for? It was too late now. He was dying again, and Elo wasn’t here to hold him.
‘The war,’ Arren managed. His vision swam, darkness crowding in at his eyes. Let them know, let them all know. He had tried to live. They should be grateful.
But the look on her face was not the disgust he expected. It was awe.
Arren had seen that look before. Given to his mother when she was queen. Given to gods. His commander did not hate him. She admired him.
Hestra and Hseth had assured him he would be dragged through the streets as a traitor if the world found he had harboured a god. They would think him weak like his mother, disloyal like Elo. He had believed them.
Arren’s brain raced as he neared death. It was what Elo always praised him for, his quick thinking, his decisiveness. What if Hseth had been wrong? What if he did not need her power to be loved?
What if there was a story here, capable of winning their faith? That was how gods were made.
‘I gave my life for Middren,’ he said, resting his fingers on his open chest. ‘All I have done … for Middren …’
Peta nodded. ‘I know …’ she said.
The other knights were beginning to understand. Arren heard a creak as one, then another, then all of the guards fell to their knees.
But it was too late. Too late for this last grasp at hope, at love. His hand dropped to the floor. His breath faded. None of them dared say a word.
A spark from the fire leapt out just as the dawn broke through the clouds. The ember ran across the wooden floor, the carpet, racing up Arren’s arm and into the cavity where his heart had been. There, it bloomed.
Hestra. She took root in his heart and once more her power filled him, warming his blood and sending it rushing. His gasping lungs swelled with air, bringing light and life to his body. He breathed.
He gripped the commander’s arm, dizzy with the sudden change. Death to life. Dark to light, as the sun illuminated all of them in gold.
Another chance.
Arren forced strength into his voice. ‘It is well,’ he said, and sat up. ‘I am well.’ He had learned this on the battlefield, suffused with fear, breaths from death, to channel strength, power, certainty. He stood on shaking legs without Peta’s help, trying not to show how terrified he had been. His commander stepped back, scared to touch him.
He would show no shame; nothing good would be built on shame. He stood tall, softened the planes of his face from pain into something gentler, then held out his shaking hands and showed his bare chest fully. The darkness within was now lit by Hestra’s fire, crowded with green moss and twigs.
The guards looked up at him, agape, uncertain. Uncertainty he could use. He saw himself in their eyes: a tale they could whisper, a myth he could build.
Hseth is dead. Hestra did not care for the crisis she had caused. Instead, her thoughts slammed into Arren’s mind, agonising. No
acknowledgement, no apology. The great god of fire is dead. Her shrinesbroken,herpowergone.
Dead. Arren gritted his teeth. One damned crisis at a time.
‘We failed you,’ Peta whispered. Two of their guards deepened their bow, another gasped, horrified at the thought.
‘No,’ said Arren quickly. ‘No, Knight Commander. I gave my life, willingly, to kill the god of war and save our lands from destruction.’ That was not all true – Arren had not killed the god of war – but the truth didn’t matter. All that mattered was the story. The myths that made gods, brought them to life in their shrines. Stories bind hope and love to make it faith.
Peta touched her hand to the badge that pinned her cloak at her shoulder, the stag’s head before a rising sun, the symbol of Arren’s kingship. His defeat of the god of war, the gods he had risen beyond. Before his symbol had been a young lion, but that he had come to share with Elo; the king’s lion, so his friend had been called. Arren had to be something else.
‘I did what I must,’ he said softly. How many times had Hseth said such a thing to him? ‘A sacrifice is not a loss. We had to fight the tide of darkness, the chaos of the gods. We still fight it, we still must fight it.’
Hestra flared in his chest, and he put a hand there.
Wait, he thought towards her, hoping she understood him.
‘To bring sunlight back to us, to Middren,’ said Arren, threading his hopes together, ‘to bring ourselves back from those nights of terror, we all must be willing to give our lives, even if it hurts us, even if it challenges our very soul.’
Hestra was still. Arren let the light of the sun brighten his curling mess of hair, let the flicker of the god’s flame twist impossibly in his heart. He was vulnerable. A single briddite blade would end him here and now.
‘If you, too, will make such offerings,’ he said, ‘then pledge to me.’ He splayed out his hand and put it over the rift in his heart. Like sunrays, like his symbol. His story.
Peta dropped to her knees and copied him: hand over heart, fingers spread wide. The others followed, hand after hand. Hestra’s flames stirred again, this time with delight, sensing what she also
desired, more than anything. Faith. For a moment, in their eyes, they were both more than they had ever been. More than his mother’s unloved son. More than a lucky prince who won a war and no longer had the commander who won it with him. More than a little god of littler shrines, chipped away and forgotten. Together, they were greater than his flesh, brighter than his crown. All he had ever wanted to be.
‘Sunbringer,’ said Peta. Arren almost laughed with half pleasure, half delirium. This was more than an alliance with Hseth, a reliance on her power.
This was him.
The others murmured with her. ‘Sunbringer.’
‘Sunbringer.’
It was not enough, not yet. He needed more. He needed a nation. He must become a god.
THE RINGING OF HAMMER ON METAL MARKED THE END OF their journey.
Twenty-three days. Back over mountains forests and rivers.
Skedi wasn’t the only outlaw these days. Inara Craier, his heart’s companion, knew now that it was the king who had burned her home, and she had not been meant to survive. Her life itself it seemed was kept secret from Middren. Elogast too, the knight on the run, grizzled with pain and anger, and set on stopping Arren’s bloody ambitions before they swallowed the Trade Sea whole. For all the journey they had relied entirely on Skedi to hide their presence with his sweet white lies.
For the first time, he was needed, truly needed. And, now he was not so alone, he did not mind hiding. Nor did he regret leaving Blenraden behind, with its spectres of forgotten gods and broken shrines. It had been a fool’s errand to think he could find a home there on his own in a dying city, where no one needed lies.
So, when they had seen Lesscia rising on the horizon, as beautiful as a flower open on the wide river, dread filled him from his belly to his ears, and shivered the tips of his wings. On the road, they had been dealing with only ‘now’. Surviving. Being safe.
Lesscia was ‘next’. Skedi was afraid of ‘next’ and his place in it.
Still, he helped them shuffle past the makeshift steadings that crowded safer parts of the marshland, and through the afternoon crowds and food trade of the outermarket, whispering the lies he had practised to death: we are no one special, no one interesting, you have taskstodo, errandstorun,placestobe.He was too weary to discern whether it was his small power or the business of the city that protected them.
The evening bells had not yet rung as they passed by the guards at the gates, so the streets were brimful of noise. Runners carrying messages or delivering merchandise sped past, their barrows clattering on the flat cobblestones as they whistled loudly at people to get out of their way. Pilots of canal boats bellowed to each other over full hulls, ferrying to and from the harbour, side to side of the canals, under bridges and crashing against stone jetties. Inside the city, too, were artisans; tilers sitting smoking by their samples outside the factories, brushmakers selling the finest rabbit-fur ends, haggling with newcomers on prices. And researchers, biographers, merchants, travellers, arguing everywhere over hot tea, peach-infused hipgin, or charcoal-laced water, depending on their stomach.
It was a relief to find their way back to the residential lanes near Kissen’s home, where the ways were quiet and calm. They walked beneath the drips of hanging washing, or children playing in the street with black and white kittens. Kissen’s horse, Legs, swished his tail, impatient, knowing where he was going. He all but dragged Inara towards the smithy where Kissen had first brought them. Where her sisters were waiting for her to come back.
Inara’s quick steps faltered as they heard the song of the hammer, the sure clanging of a smith at work, and reached the large gate on its metal runners. It was open, and above it hung a crisply worked sign of gears and a hammer, telling passersby what lay beyond. Yatho didn’t work near the other smithies, where the ginnels were too narrow for her wheelchair. And smithing, Skedi had learned, wasn’t a common practice in Lesscia, the city of knowledge, so her experimental, intricate work had a home all of its own.
It was there, their destination, that Inara stopped completely. Skedi looked up through the satchel in which he had been hidden. He could see her colours, her emotions, churning in conflicting shades. Hard to read. Inara’s colours had once been jewel-like: corals and amethyst, citrine and emerald. Bright, unfettered joys and woes of childhood. No more. Day by day, the shine of her emotions had clouded with forest-murk and glimmers of the orange flame that had burned her home and had fallen with Kissen into the sea. Inara carried her journey with her, and it had changed who she was. It was strange. Gods did not alter so swiftly, not like humans.
But somewhere hidden within those shades of Inara’s was the sky-blue of her will. Her power that had broken Skedi’s lies, unravelled Elo’s curse, held the great god Hseth at bay. Power that did not belong to a human at all.
‘You’ve done so well, Inara,’ said Elo, stopping beside her. ‘It’s all right. I will tell them.’ Elo, too, had changed. The upright, cleanshaven man was now bent with fatigue and pain, shoulders dipped protectively towards his chest. His hair and beard had grown out, dry and unkempt around eyes that were shadowed with lack of sleep. The smell of his wound had lightened, at least, though the herbs tucked into the yellowed bandages on his chest still could not fully hide the stink of healing skin.
Skedi poked his head fully out of Inara’s satchel. He misliked its muck of mud and foraged food. Unfit for a god.
‘Must we tell them?’ he said, twitching his whiskers. He was a god of white lies, but this was cold, hard truth. ‘I do not like this. We could say we don’t know what happened, that she might still be …’
‘Please, Skedi,’ said Inara, her voice tight. ‘Please don’t.’
Skedi dropped his ears at her tone. They had all seen Kissen plummet into the sea. Even if she had survived the fall in Hseth’s arms, she would have drowned. It just felt wrong to Skedi to quench all hope, to tell a truth that would cause such pain.
Inara took a breath. ‘I will tell them, Elo,’ she said. ‘They know me. They should hear it from someone they know.’
Elo grunted with understanding. Legs, however, would abide no more waiting. He snorted, gave his reins a smart tug out of Inara’s hand and trotted straight through the gate, going nose-first for the trough. Trust a horse to know where their water was. The second pony, Peony, they had sold many days before for balm and clean bandages, but Legs they couldn’t part with.
Inara followed Legs into the courtyard, clutching Skedi’s satchel as he hunkered back inside, Elo a close and steady presence behind them. The courtyard was as Skedi remembered it: mud-beaten, crisscrossed with wheel tracks save for a small vegetable patch by the stable, out of reach of the milkgoat and thick with spring greens. The smithy was open to the air and one of its three furnaces was lit. By it, Bea, Yatho’s apprentice, was beating a long piece of folded metal. He wore a wool hat over his ears, despite the heat, and was humming gently to himself. The boy struggled when there was too much noise, but his colours seemed calm and focused. Yatho herself was standing with the aid of a metal contraption and a tilted saddle, rolling a wire through a compressing wheel. No one else was around, so Skedi poked his head back out of his hiding space.
Legs began drinking noisily, and Yatho looked up from her work.
‘You’re back!’ she said, her colours brightening to lemon yellow. She saw Inara first and lifted a lever to lower her seat, then unbuckled herself and moved into her wheelchair. ‘Thank gods, we were starting to worry …’ She rubbed her face, smudging dust, burns and freckles together with smoke-stains and sweat from the furnace. She had recently shaved her hair back behind the ears, showing more of her leafy tattoos.
Then she stopped, noting their silence, Elogast in the place of Kissen, and Skedi. Kissen had left to separate Skedi from Inara; she had not succeeded.
The yellow faded, and instead the shine about Yatho became stained with a stormy, doubting grey, the colour of cold metal. ‘Where’s Kissen?’ she asked.
The change was so sudden, so complete, that Skedi knew she had been holding this fear just beneath her skin, like a breath she never fully exhaled.
‘Kissen …’ Inara’s voice stopped before she could speak and the darkness around Yatho deepened, thick with dread.
Itwillbeallright,Skedi said directly to Inara’s mind. It’sallright.
Don’tlietome,Skedi,Inara said, with a sharpness that made him shrink. She cleared her throat, and Elo put his hand on her shoulder, his own shades awash with pity.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Inara, her voice hoarse. ‘Yatho … she died.’
Skedi knew she was picturing it, the fall. Or worse, when she had told them to run, and they had obeyed.
Yatho’s darkness stretched out, filling the space around her. She stared ahead for a moment, her gaze unfocused, then looked down at her hands. Strong, muscled, empty.
‘Your sister gave her life in Blenraden,’ said Elo, unable to bear it as Inara shook. ‘Protecting Inara, Skedi and myself. She’s the bravest woman I’ve known.’
Yatho put her palms to her eyes. Skedi shrank to the size of a mouse. She was so quiet as her colours consumed her like a choking cloud, and it frightened him. Skedi wanted to save her from this truth, lie it away. But her grief was too much, too great, too deep. Such emotion was not in his power to change. He was not strong enough.
‘How?’ Yatho said, her voice so tight it was a whisper.
‘Hseth, the fire god,’ said Inara. ‘Yatho, Kissen told us what happened to her as a girl. They fell together, into the sea. She had her vengeance.’
Yatho let out a dry sound – a sob, or a laugh? Both? She looked over at Legs. Her eyes were dry, but Skedi could see the greyness sinking into her skin, curling around it like the vines of her tattoos. Her eyes roved to the house, to the gate, to the workshop. Skedi
followed her gaze. There, on the wall, were the fine briddite pieces of a new prosthesis. For Kissen.
‘Did it hurt?’ she asked.
Inara and Elo hesitated. They both knew that death by flames was not kind. Skedi stepped in, a good lie if he ever told one.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It was quick.’
Yatho narrowed her eyes at him, though despite herself she was soothed. ‘Did you have anything to do with this, liar god?’
Skedi rustled his fur, but he found he didn’t have the energy to grow in size and pride. Days of making lies, averting curiosity, shielding them all, had taken its toll.
‘No,’ said Elo. ‘It wasn’t his fault. It was mine.’ Skedi twisted up to look at Elo, whose jaw was set and determined. Bad idea. Bad truth to tell.
‘Kissen gave her life for Middren,’ said Elo, ‘and for me.’
Yatho’s shades turned sharp, her anger tipping the darkness with green. ‘And why would she do that?’
Elo showed the bandages that wrapped his chest beneath his shirt. Even now, the wound still seeped, and the shape of Hseth’s great hand could be seen, darkening the fabric.
‘So I could kill the king.’
FOR THE SECOND TIME IN HER LIFE, KISSEN WOKE IN THE arms of the sea god.
Everything hurt. The cut on her shoulder, the burns on her right leg where her half-melted prosthesis had seared her skin. The nicks, scratches, and aches of long weeks of fitful nights and being hunted through the wild lands. Her body was keeping score of its battles. But now all was quiet save for the rush and breath of waves striking stone, dragging chiming pebbles and shells out, inch by inch, into the deep. It had been so long since she had heard the sound of this particular shore.
She opened her eyes with a snap. Above her, the sea god of her childhood looked out to the east, contemplating the water. Behind him, the sky was dark with evening and potential thunder.
‘Fuck,’ Kissen hissed, tipping herself out of Osidisen’s embrace and landing in an ungainly heap on the rocky ground. This shore was as she remembered it, though she had not seen it in almost fourteen years: filled with black stone rising and crumbling like an empire’s ruins. The cliffs surrounding them loomed high and dark, circled by cormorants.
Osidisen looked down. Here he had brought her after the fire god Hseth had destroyed her family, broken, orphaned and burned. His holy cove, known to all the village as the place the sea god would take his rest. Kissen touched her chest where she had carried the wish her father had made for her: his life for her life. The writing had turned from dark to light, the promise fulfilled, her father’s life gone.
‘Why did you bring me back here, rat-drowner?’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘I asked you to save me, not drag me back to nowhere.’ This was leagues from the Trade Sea where she had fallen from Blenraden’s shrines. Inevitably, she found her eyes drawn to the black cliffs north of the bay. There, as a child, she would have seen the struts of her village’s houses clinging to the edge, shaken by the wind and spray of the sea. No more. The cliff had fallen, the houses too. The village was gone.
‘It might occur to you,’ said Osidisen quietly, ‘not to insult a god on his own land.’
‘It might occur to you that I don’t give a shit.’
She struggled to her feet, trying not to look at her warped and twisted prosthesis. She could sense the ache of her missing right limb below the knee. Phantom pain; her calf, shin, and ankle squeezed in a bone-splintering vice of agony. And so it should hurt; if the leg hadn’t been metal Hseth would have burned her through to the bone. But she wouldn’t look at it. Not yet. She had to convince herself that it was still her leg, and it would still hold her, or she would crash to the ground.
‘Tell me why,’ Kissen demanded. She didn’t want to be here, so close to her childhood pain. What would her still living family think of
her disappearance? Her friends? Elo and Inara?
They would think she was dead. Her heart knotted in her chest, tightening her lungs. How could she tell them she was alive? She was weeks away from home on foot, and in a land whose god she had just killed.
‘The “why” is a warning,’ said Osidisen. His face drifted as he spoke, turning from a rush of water and a beard of foam into something more human. His skin hardened into flesh, the froth turning to grey-and-white strands of hair, though his body remained a cloak of waves, eating the light where it touched. A warning? This was the god who had watched her steps as a child, who helped her find good pools of cockles, who had helped her swim through stormy waters. What warning could he have for her? ‘An obligation,’ he added.
Kissen shook her head. His love had made her family a target, a sacrifice to Hseth. She wanted nothing from him. ‘You have fulfilled my father’s wish,’ she said through a scowl. ‘The promise that tied us is done.’
Osidisen laughed, his beard foaming and curling as he chuckled, disappearing further into the water. His hair ran green, turning into fronds of seaweed, then returned again. The light of the setting sun was golden, dancing over the foam of the waves until it met the purpling cloud of an incoming storm. She had been there for a whole day.
‘You waited half your little life to let me fulfil your father’s sacrifice,’ the god said. ‘Then you deliver me another boon.’
Kissen winced.
‘The fire god. Hseth,’ Osidisen continued. ‘She drove me out of these lands and my people’s hearts, to live on the secret wishes of fishwives and their folk. You gave her death to me—’
‘It was not for you,’ said Kissen through gritted teeth. It was for Inara, for Elogast. For her family. And herself.
‘This warning is what I will pay for it.’
It did not matter to him, her intention, only what was. She cursed under her breath. ‘You give me a warning, then what?’ she said.
‘Then you leave me here again? Demand another gift to take me home? What will it be this time? My finger? An eye?’
‘I swear to take you to those shores you now call home once the warning is done,’ said Osidisen dismissively, as if he had not brought her half the world away. ‘These are the whispers of the wild, of the water. You have had them before, but you did not understand them.’
WhenMiddrenfallstothegods,yourkindwillbethefirsttodie.
The mutter of a nothing-god rose to her mind. A river spirit too big for its little pond had paid her threats with her last breath.
‘And I know,’ Osidisen continued, his gaze boring into her, as if searching for her soul, ‘you would not believe a god’s word, only your own eyes.’
There was movement out on the water; ships drifting under the storm clouds and a low veil of rain, some from the south, some from the north. Osidisen ignored them, his focus on Kissen. If he wished, he could press his voice inside her mind, impress his will on her and fill her thoughts with terror and drowning. Weakened as he was, he was still an old, half-wild god with many shrines. She ran a tongue over her gold tooth, then shifted to sit warily on the ground. Of all her weapons, only her cutlass was left, its briddite blade perhaps enough to sting Osidisen if he decided to crush her. Even the leather gloves she still wore, that she had used to drag Hseth down to the water, had been torn to rags, the briddite plates gone. She was at a disadvantage, and she didn’t like it.
‘Then what is my warning, sea god?’
‘War will come with summer,’ said Osidisen, ‘and Talicia will bring it.’
Kissen blinked, then scoffed. ‘I’m a godkiller, war is nothing to do with me. A game of monarchs and politicians, or greedy raiders. You yourself guided Talician ships to Middren’s shores in the years before I was born, and bore them back fat and bloody.’
Then, after a decade of raids and sunken ships, an alliance of Middren, Pinet and Restish had come for the Talician kerls and their raiding families. They had ravaged the coast and its people to ruin, and scattered their leaders’ bloodlines to the winds. Kissen had grown up on the edge of a Talicia that was a mess of feuds and
corruption, petty battles, blood debts and starvation. Her parents had kept well clear of it, till Hseth came and brought wealth back with her.
‘This is no squabble over sails and sheep,’ said Osidisen. ‘Hseth plans invasion.’
‘Hseth is dead.’
‘Her will remains, and with it she will live again.’
‘Bah. That will take years.’ Even with the popular gods, it took time to build up the love of their followers, the sacrifices, the offerings, for them to manifest again at their shrines. Once revived, they still retained no memories of their previous life, so most gods never lived again after death, their followers instead drifting away to other gods still living.
‘Not this time,’ said Osidisen, his beard washing once more into his breast, his cloak running into the sand. ‘Hseth will return before the shortest night, sooner perhaps, and she will be reborn in the shape of the will she left behind her. The shape of power, the shape of war.’
Kissen bared her teeth. Fuck no. The crazy god of fire had had her chance and lost. ‘You’re spouting lies, old god.’
Osidisen bristled. He grew in size, and his body deepened into angry water. ‘I am no trickster god, like your feathered companion,’ he growled. ‘I am a god of the north seas, of water and storm. I am what I am, and I do not tell lies.’
Kissen’s hair rose with the intensity of his anger. How did he know she had been travelling with Skediceth, the god of white lies? She glanced past him at the ships, a foolish part of her hoping for succour. Something was odd about them.
‘Not three miles to the south,’ said Osidisen, pointing, his waters calming. ‘Beyond my reach from the shore. Go. See what I say is true.’
That was it: the ships, three of them, were low in the water, far too low, and dragging rafts that were barely visible above the waves. They bore strange cargo: small nests, it looked like, of metal and chains. Familiar. Like the smell of burning was familiar.
Kissen was wholly distracted now from Osidisen’s nonsense. The ships were coming closer. Another rounded the edge of the cove, from the direction he had indicated. It was the largest Talician vessel she had seen, not like the copper-trading vessels she had seen in Blenraden, nor even with the briddite on their bows they used to ward sea gods away. Perhaps that was why Osidisen hadn’t noticed them. Perhaps she could draw them in, beg passage further south, make her way home. To her family.
There was movement on the rafts, crews spreading out and using huge poles to tip the cages forward. Anchors? The first one tumbled into the water, quickly followed by the others, their placement marked by red barrel-buoys that splashed on the surface.
Osidisen flinched. Foam frothed from his hair and beard. Pain. He tore around to see what had happened, but then his right shoulder erupted in a spray of water. The god roared, and Kissen saw he had been struck by a briddite-tipped harpoon.
Kissen scrambled to her feet. The cages, the chain. They must be briddite too, forged from bridhid ore and iron. Tipping them into Osidisen’s waters would make a wall he could not cross. No, a prison. She hadn’t seen briddite used on such a scale since Blenraden.
Osidisen pulled out the harpoon and threw it back towards the boat, striking through its jib but doing no further damage. A second harpoon slammed into him, this one at the end of a rope that was quickly winched tight. Kissen could see someone on the ship in white, snapping out orders as they dragged the god onto his back and towards his sea.
This wasn’t a random attack: this was planned. A godkilling.
The god of her childhood cried out as his body hit the stones of the cove, the sound like the creaking of a ship as a storm took it. Briddite was more deadly to gods than any metal was to human. The salted smell of his inner flesh burned Kissen’s nose, the blood of old sacrifices mixed with ancient sea and smoke. What could she do? What should she do? This was her job. She hated gods. She hated Osidisen. She had for years. She should feel satisfied to see the bubbles of salt pouring from his wound as he was hauled like a sack of haddock into the waves. Even if he had been
her father’s lover. The protector of her mother and brothers. The god who had just saved her. So what if he was dragged to his death?
His dark-grey eyes bored into hers. Frightened, caught. Vulnerable. Like Skedi, like Inara.
She gritted her teeth, drew her cutlass.
He had remembered her, after all these years. He had honoured his promise. That was more than most humans she had met.
‘Shit,’ muttered Kissen. She brought the blade’s edge down on the rope, which snapped and hissed back into the water.
Freed, Osidisen grasped the harpoon and tore it out of his shoulder. He glared at Kissen, his flesh darkening, his eyes turning from grey to the black of the cold depths. He knew she had been one instinct away from finishing him herself.
With a roar, Osidisen lifted his hand and the sea surged in around them, flying up the cliffs in ragged sheets of water. A shield for her.
‘Get to my caves!’ cried the god, then threw himself into the salt waves of the briddite-tainted sea. The boats turned their harpoons towards the water, and one was quickly overwhelmed by a wave that tore through its sails.
What had she done?
Too late for regrets. All Kissen had to do now was survive. She moved, relying on her memories to guide her steps to the north of the cove. Each movement shook pain from her bones and reminded her that the prosthesis she relied on was irrevocably warped.
There, where she remembered, out in the water; a half-hidden split in the cliff face with the tide almost up to its brim. She sheathed her cutlass and leapt into the bitter cold, pushing forward with her arms and dragging her legs behind her. Waves surged around her, tossing her sideways, slapping into her nose and mouth. She struggled.
Then, the current came like a hand at her back. It pushed her into the shadow of the cliff, straight through the narrow entrance. She broke the surface, found air, and gasped for breath. The sea fell back with a suck and gasp and left her in the dark.
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Carolina convention, the same Iredell, after pointing out that the American concept of the relation of citizen to all governments had become basic American law, contrasts that fact with the fundamental law of Great Britain where “Magna Charta itself is no constitution, but a solemn instrument ascertaining certain rights of individuals, by the legislature for the time being; and every article of which the legislature may at any time alter.” (4 Ell. Deb. 148.)
In the Pennsylvania convention, on December I, 1787, one of the most distinguished lawyers of that generation made a memorable speech, expressing the universal knowledge that the American concept had taken forever the place of the Tory concept in fundamental American law. We commend a careful study of that speech to those of our public leaders and “constitutional” lawyers, who for five years have been acting on the assumption that the Tory concept has again become our fundamental American law. We average Americans, after living with those earlier Americans, are not surprised to listen to the statements of Wilson. “The secret is now disclosed, and it is discovered to be a dread, that the boasted state sovereignties will, under this system, be disrobed of part of their power.... Upon what principle is it contended that the sovereign power resides in the state governments?... The proposed system sets out with a declaration that its existence depends upon the supreme authority of the people alone.... When the principle is once settled that the people are the source of authority, the consequence is, that they may take from the subordinate governments powers which they have hitherto trusted them, and place those powers in the general government, if it is thought that there they will be productive of more good. They can distribute one portion of power to the more contracted circle, called state governments; they can also furnish another proportion to the government of the United States. Who will undertake to say, as a state officer, that the people may not give to the general government what powers, and for what purposes, they please? How comes it, sir, that these state governments dictate to their superiors—to the majesty of the people?” (2 Ell. Deb. 443.)
We average Americans, legally bound (as American citizens) by no command (interfering with our human freedom) except from our
only legislature at Washington and then only in those matters in which we ourselves, the citizens of America, have directly given it power to command us, now intend insistently to ask all our governments, the supreme one at Washington and the subordinate ones in the states of which we are also citizens, exactly the same question which Wilson asked.
Daniel Webster asked almost exactly the same question of Hayne and history does not record any answer deemed satisfactory by the American people. Webster believed implicitly in the concept of American law stated by those who made our Constitution. Like them, and unlike our “constitutional” lawyers, he knew that the Tory concept of the relation of men to their government had disappeared from American basic law.
“This leads us to inquire into the origin of this government, and the source of its power. Whose agent is it? Is it the creature of the state legislatures, or the creature of the people?... It is, sir, the people’s constitution, the people’s government—made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people. The people of the United States have declared that this Constitution shall be the supreme law. We must either admit the proposition, or dispute their authority. The states are, unquestionably, sovereign, so far as their sovereignty is not affected by this supreme law. But the state legislatures, as political bodies, however sovereign, are yet not sovereign over the people.... The national government possesses those powers which it can be shown the people have conferred on it, and no more.... We are here to administer a Constitution emanating immediately from the people, and trusted by them to our administration.... This government, sir, is the independent offspring of the popular will. It is not the creature of state legislatures; nay, more, if the whole truth must be told, the people brought it into existence, established it, and have hitherto supported it, for the very purpose, amongst others, of imposing certain salutary restraints on state sovereignties.... The people, then, sir, erected this government. They gave it a constitution, and in that constitution they have enumerated the powers which they bestow upon it.... Sir, the very chief end, the main design for which the whole constitution was
framed and adopted, was to establish a government that should not be obliged to act through state agency, depend on state opinion and state discretion.... If anything be found in the national constitution, either by original provisions, or subsequent interpretation, which ought not to be in it, the people know how to get rid of it. If any construction be established, unacceptable to them, so as to become practically a part of the constitution, they will amend it at their own sovereign pleasure. But while the people choose to maintain it as it is—while they are satisfied with it, and refuse to change it—who has given, or who can give, to the state legislatures a right to alter it, either by interference, construction, ?... Sir, the people have not trusted their safety, in regard to the general constitution, to these hands. They have required other security, and taken other bonds.” (From Webster’s reply to Hayne, U. S. Senate, January, 1830. 4 Ell. Deb. 498 et seq.)
We average Americans, now educated in the experience of the average American from 1776 to the beginning of 1787, find much merit and comfort in Webster’s understanding of basic American law. He had a reasoned and firm conviction that Americans really are citizens and not subjects. His conviction, in that respect, while opposed to the convictions of our leaders and “constitutional” lawyers, has seemed to us quite in accord with the convictions of earlier leaders such as Iredell and Wilson and the others, and also with the decisions of our Supreme Court.
Briefly stated, it has become quite clear to us that the American people, from 1776 to 1787, were fixed in their determination to make our basic American law what the conviction of Webster and the leaders of every generation prior to our own knew it to be Let us go back, therefore, to the Americans in the Philadelphia convention of 1787, who worded the Constitution which is the supreme law of America, and ascertain how their knowledge of fundamental American law dictated the wording of their proposed Seventh Article.
CHAPTER VIII
PHILADELPHIA ANSWERS “CONVENTIONS, NOT LEGISLATURES”
We recall how clearly the Americans at Philadelphia, in 1787, knew that any grant of national power to interfere with the freedom of individuals was the constitution of government. We recall the bitter conflict of opinion, threatening the destruction of the assembly, over the manner of choosing the members of the legislature to exercise whatever powers of that kind the citizens of America might grant. We recall the great opposition to the proposal of a grant of any power of that kind and to the particular proposal of each of the enumerated powers of that kind, all embodied in the First Article.
We have thus come to know with certainty that the minds of the Americans at Philadelphia, during those strenuous four months, were concentrated mainly upon a proposal to grant some national power to interfere with the human freedom of all Americans. In other words, we have their knowledge that their proposed First Article, by reason of its grants of such power, would constitute a new nation and government of men, if those grants were validly made by those competent to make such grants.
Under which circumstances, we realize that it became necessary for them to make a great legal decision, in the construction of basic American law, and, before making that decision, which was compelled to be the result of judgment and not of will, accurately to ascertain one important legal fact. Indeed, their decision was to be the actual conclusion reached in the effort to ascertain that legal fact. This was the single question to which they must find the right answer: “Under our basic American law, can legislatures ever give to government any power to interfere with the human freedom of men,
or must every government in America obtain its only valid powers of that kind by direct grant from its own citizens?”
It is easy for us to state that they should have known that the answer to that question was expressly and authoritatively given in the Statute of ’76. It was there plainly enacted that every just power of any government must be derived from the direct grant of those to be governed by its exercise. Yet our own leaders for the last five years have not even asked the question, much less known the right answer.
At Philadelphia, in 1787, they did know it. They had no doubt whatever about it. We shall see that quickly in our brief review of the record they made at Philadelphia in ascertaining and deciding, as a legal necessity, to whom their First Article and its enumerated grants of national power must be sent and, when we boast of how quickly we knew the answer, we should admit that we did not know it until after we had lived again with them through their experience of the preceding ten or twelve years which had educated them, as it has just educated us, to that knowledge. Furthermore, many of us average Americans will be unable to explain, until later herein, why, during the last five years, our own leaders have not known the right answer. The Statute of ’76 has not been wholly unknown to them. The record of the Philadelphia Convention and the ratifying conventions has not been entirely a closed book to them. The important and authentic statements of Webster and other leaders of past generations have been read by many of them. If they did not understand and know the correct answer, as we now realize they have not known, let us not withhold from the Americans at Philadelphia our just tribute of gratitude that they did accurately know, when it was amazingly important to us that they should know.
When those Americans came to answer that question, there were facts which might have misled them as other similar facts of lesser importance have undoubtedly misled our leaders.
In 1776, from that same Philadelphia had gone a suggestion that a constitution of government, with Articles granting power to government, be made in each former colony. In 1787, there had
gone from that same Philadelphia a proposal that a constitution of a general government for America be made, with Articles granting power to that government. The proposal of 1776 had suggested that the proposed Articles be made by the people themselves, assembled in conventions. The proposal of 1777 had suggested that the proposed Articles be made by the legislative governments of the states. Both proposals, even as to the makers of the respective Articles, had been acted upon. All the Articles, although some had been made by the people themselves and others by legislatures, had been generally recognized as valid law Some of the men at Philadelphia in 1787 had been members of the proposing Second Continental Congress, when the respective proposals of 1776 and 1777 had gone from Philadelphia. When, in 1787, they were called upon to find and state, as their legal decision, the correct answer to their important question, it was necessary for them to ascertain, as between state “legislatures” and the people themselves, in “conventions,” which could validly make the Articles which had been worded and were about to be proposed. It would not, therefore, have been beyond the pale of our own experience if the earlier proposals had misled them and they had made the wrong answer to the question which confronted them. Furthermore, as we have already noted, although we can little realize the influence of such a fact upon men seeking the correct legal answer to an important question, their whole proposal was a new adventure for men on an uncharted sea of self-government. Under all of which circumstances, let us again pay them their deserved tribute that they went unerringly to the only correct answer.
We know that the essence of that answer is expressed in the Seventh Article proposed from Philadelphia. Only one answer was possible to Americans of that generation. They had been “subjects” and had become “citizens.” They knew the vital distinctions between the two relations to government.
The Convention which framed the Constitution was, indeed, elected by the state legislatures. But the instrument, when it came from their hands, was a mere proposal, without obligation, or pretensions to it. It was reported to the then
existing Congress of the United States, with the request that it might “be submitted to a convention of delegates, chosen in each state by the people thereof, under the recommendation of its legislature, for their assent and ratification.” This mode of proceeding was adopted; and by the Convention, by Congress, and by the state legislatures, the instrument was submitted to the people. They acted upon it in the only manner in which they can act safely, effectively, and wisely, on such a subject, by assembling in convention. It is true, they assembled in their several states; and where else should they have assembled? No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the states, and of compounding the American people into one common mass. Of consequence, when they [the American people] act, they act in their states. But the measures they adopt do not, on that account, cease to be the measures of the people themselves, or become the measures of the state governments. From these conventions the Constitution [the First Article grants of power to interfere with individual freedom] derives its whole authority. The government proceeds directly from the people; is “ordained and established” in the name of the people.... It required not the affirmance, and could not be negatived, by the state governments.... To the formation of a league, such as was the Confederation, the state sovereignties were certainly competent.
But, when a general government of America was to be given any national power to interfere with the individual freedom of its citizens, as in the First Article of 1787 and in the Eighteenth Amendment of 1917, acting directly on the people, the necessity of referring it to the people, and of deriving its powers directly from them, was felt and acknowledged by all. The government of the Union, then, (whatever may be the influence of this fact on the case,) is, emphatically, and truly, a government of the people. In form and in substance it emanates from them. Its powers are
granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on them, and for their benefit. (Marshall in the Supreme Court, M’Culloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316.)
Marshall was one of the Americans who had been at Valley Forge in 1778, and at other places whose sacrifices made it the basic law of America that all power over American citizens must be derived by direct grant from themselves. Later, he was prominent in the Virginia convention where all Americans in Virginia knew and acted upon this basic law. These facts qualified him to testify, from the Bench of the Supreme Court, that all Americans then knew and acknowledged the binding command of that basic law.
Under such circumstances, it was impossible that the Americans at Philadelphia should not have known and obeyed that law in the drafting of their proposed Seventh and Fifth Articles. Both of these Articles, the Seventh wholly, and the Fifth partly, deal with the then future grant of national power over the people and its only legal gift by direct grant from the people themselves, assembled in their “conventions.” Both Articles name the people of America, by the one word “conventions.”
That Philadelphia should not have strayed from the legal road clearly marked by the Statute of ’76 was certain when we recall how large a part Madison played at Philadelphia, and particularly how he personally worded and introduced, in the closing hours at Philadelphia, what we know as its Fifth Article. As to his personal knowledge of this basic law, we recall his letter of April, 1787, where he said, “To give the new system its proper energy, it will be desirable to have it ratified by the authority of the people, and not merely by that of the legislatures.” And we recall his later words, when urging Americans to adopt the Constitution with its Fifth and Seventh Articles, he said of the Seventh, “This Article speaks for itself. The express authority of the people alone could give due validity to the Constitution,” to its grants of power over the people in its First Article. (Fed. No. 43.)
That we may fix firmly in our own minds the knowledge which all Americans then had, which our leaders never acquired or have
entirely forgotten, let us briefly review what the earlier Americans did at Philadelphia in obedience to that knowledge of basic American law.
On May 28, Randolph of Virginia “opened the main business” of the Convention. He proposed fifteen resolutions embodying the suggestion of what should be in the different Articles. Resolution Number 15 was that such Articles should be submitted to “conventions,” “to be expressly chosen by the people, to consider and decide thereon.” (5 Ell. Deb. 128.)
The first short debate on this Resolution took place on June 5. In it Madison stated that he “thought this provision essential. The Articles of Confederation themselves were defective in this respect, resting, in many of the states, on the legislative sanction only.” The resolution was then postponed for further consideration. On June 12, “The question was taken on the 15th Resolution, to wit, referring the new system to the people of the United States for ratification. It passed in the affirmative.” (5 Ell. Deb. 183.) This was all in the Committee of the Whole.
On June 13, that Committee made their full report, in which the Randolph Resolution Number 15 was embodied in words as Resolution Number 19 of the report. On June 16, while the Convention was again sitting as a Committee of the Whole, the great struggle was on between the conflicting opinions as to how and in what proportion should be elected the future legislators who were to exercise the granted powers over Americans. On that day, the discussion centered on the relative merits of the Randolph national proposals and a set of federal Articles amending the existing Federal Constitution. In supporting Randolph, Wilson of Pennsylvania stated that “he did not fear that the people would not follow us into a national government; and it will be a further recommendation of Mr Randolph’s plan that it is to be submitted to them, and not to the legislatures, for ratification.” (5 Ell. Deb. 196.)
On July 23, Resolution Number 19 came up for action. Remembering how insistent many of the delegates were that the general government should be kept a purely federal one, it is not
surprising to find Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut opening the short debate with a motion that the Constitution “be referred to the legislatures of the states for ratification.” But it will also be remembered that the powers to be granted in the new Articles had not yet been settled. The nationalists in the Convention, intent on having some national Articles, knew that the proposed ratification must be by the people themselves, “felt and acknowledged by all” to be the only competent grantors of national powers.
Colonel Mason of Virginia “considered a reference of the plan to the authority of the people as one of the most important and essential of the resolutions. The legislatures have no power to ratify it. They are the mere creatures of the state constitutions, and cannot be greater than their creators.... Whither, then, must we resort? To the people, with whom all power remains that has not been given up in the constitutions derived from them. It was of great moment that this doctrine should be cherished, as the basis of free government.” (5 Ell. Deb. 352.)
Rufus King of Massachusetts, influenced undoubtedly by the error of thinking that the Convention meant to act within the Articles of Confederation, was inclined to agree with Ellsworth “that the legislatures had a competent authority, the acquiescence of the people of America in the Confederation being equivalent to a formal ratification by the people.... At the same time, he preferred a reference to the authority of the people, expressly delegated to conventions, as the most certain means of obviating all disputes and doubts concerning the legitimacy of the new Constitution.” (5 Ell. Deb. 355.)
Madison “thought it clear that the legislatures were incompetent to the proposed changes. These changes would make essential inroads on the state constitutions; and it would be a novel and dangerous doctrine, that a legislature could change the constitution under which it held its existence.” (5 Ell. Deb. 355.)
Ellsworth’s motion to send to the state legislative governments, and not to the people themselves, assembled in “conventions,” was lost by a vote of seven to three. Resolution Number 19, that the new
Articles must be sent to the people themselves was adopted by a vote of nine to one, Ellsworth and King both voting for it. (5 Ell. Deb. 356.)
This impressive discussion, now continued for over a month of 1787, with its display of accurate knowledge of the distinction between sending Articles to legislatures and “referring” them to the people, makes quite amusing what we shall hear later in 1917. It will come from the counsel of the political organization which dictated that governments should make the supposed Eighteenth Amendment. After he kindly tells us that history has proven that these Americans of 1787 “builded more wisely than they knew,” meaning “than he knew,” he shall later impart to us the remarkable information that “the framers in the Constitutional Convention knew very little, if anything, about referendums.”
The Resolutions, which had now become twenty-three in number, on July 26, were referred to the Committee of Detail to prepare Articles in conformity therewith. On August 6, that Committee made its report of twenty-three worded Articles. In Article XXII was embodied the requirement that the Constitution should be submitted “to a convention chosen in each state, under the recommendation of its legislature, in order to receive the ratification of such convention.” This provision, the Philadelphia answer and always the only legal answer to the question as to who can validly grant power to interfere with individual freedom, was later seen not properly to belong in the Constitution itself. For which reason, it was taken out of the Constitution and embodied in a separate Resolution which went with the Constitution from Philadelphia.
In Article XXI, the first draft of our Article VII, it was provided: “The ratification of the conventions of —— states shall be sufficient for organizing this Constitution.” (5 Ell. Deb. 381.)
The month of August was passed in the great debates on the proposed grants of national power and the other proposed Articles. When the Convention was drawing to a close on August 30, Articles XXI and XXII were reached.
Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania “moved to strike out of Article XXI the words, ‘conventions of the,’ after ‘ratification,’ leaving the states to pursue their own modes of ratification.” Rufus King “thought that striking out ‘conventions,’ as the requisite mode, was equivalent to giving up the business altogether.” Madison pointed out that, “The people were, in fact, the fountain of all power.” The motion of Morris was beaten. An attempt was made to fill the blank in Article XXI with the word “thirteen.” “All the states were ‘No’ except Maryland.” The blank was then filled by the word “nine” the vote being eight to three. The two articles were then passed, the vote thereon being ten to one. (5 Ell. Deb. 499-502.)
On September 10, the beginning of the last business week of the Convention, Gerry of Massachusetts moved to reconsider these two Articles. The short discussion was not in connection with any matter in which we are now interested. His motion was lost. The entire set of worded Articles was then referred to a committee for revising the style and arrangement of the Articles agreed upon. (5 Ell. Deb. 535.)
On Wednesday, September 12, that Committee reported our Constitution, with its seven Articles, as we know them except for some slight changes made during the discussions of the last three or four days of the Convention. In these seven Articles, the language of the earlier Article XXII did not appear. As it really was the statement of the correct legal conclusion of the Convention that its proposed Articles, because they would grant power to interfere with individual freedom, must necessarily be made by the people themselves, its proper place was outside the Constitution itself and in a special Resolution of the same nature as every Congress resolution proposing an amendment to that Constitution. That was the view of the Committee and, on Thursday, September 13, the Committee reported such special Resolutions, in the very words of the former Article XXII. “The proceedings on these Resolutions are not given by Mr. Madison, nor in the Journal of the Federal Convention. In the Journal of Congress, September 28, 1787, Volume 4, p. 781, they are stated to have been presented to that body, as having passed in the Convention on September 17 immediately after the signing of the Constitution.” (5 Ell. Deb. 602.)
This is the Resolution:
“R , That the preceding Constitution be laid before the United States in Congress assembled; and that it is the opinion of this Convention, that it should afterwards be submitted to a convention of delegates chosen in each state by the people thereof, under the recommendation of its legislature, for their assent and ratification; and that each convention, assenting to and ratifying the same, should give notice thereof to the United States in Congress assembled.
“R , That it is the opinion of this Convention, that, as soon as the conventions of nine states shall have ratified this Constitution, the United States in Congress assembled should fix a day, etc.” (5 Ell. Deb. 541.)
This Resolution is the most authoritative statement of the legal conclusion reached by these leaders of a people then “better acquainted with the science of government than any other people in the world.” The conclusion itself was compelled by accurate knowledge that the government of “citizens” can validly obtain only from the citizens themselves, by their direct grant, any power to interfere with their individual freedom. The expression of that knowledge, in the Resolution, is, in many respects, one of the most important recorded legal decisions ever made in America. We average Americans, educated with those Americans at Philadelphia through their experience of the years between 1775 and 1787, cannot misunderstand the meaning and importance of that decision. Instructed by our review of their actions and their reasoning at Philadelphia in reaching that conclusion and making that legal decision, we know, with an accurate certainty, that it was their declaration to the world and to us that no proposal from Philadelphia suggested that Americans again resume the relation of “subjects” to any government or governments.
Our minds impressed with this accurate knowledge that such was not their purpose, we now prepare to complete our education as American citizens, not subjects, by reading the Philadelphia story and language of their Fifth Article, their only other Article which even
partly concerned the future grant of new government power to interfere with individual American freedom. By reason of our education, we will then come to the reading of the language of this Article, as the Americans read it and understood it when they made it in their “conventions” that followed the proposing convention of Philadelphia.
Being educated “citizens” and not “subjects,” we ourselves will no longer, as our leaders have done for five years, mistake the only correct and legal answer to the indignant outburst of Madison, who wrote this Fifth Article at Philadelphia. “Was, then, the American Revolution effected, was the American Confederacy formed, was the precious blood of thousands spilt, and the hard-earned substance of millions lavished, not that the people of America should enjoy peace, liberty, and safety, but that the governments of the individual states, that particular municipal establishments, might enjoy a certain extent of power, and be arrayed with certain dignities and attributes of sovereignty? We have heard of the impious doctrine in the Old World, that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the New, in another shape— that the solid happiness of the people is to be sacrificed to the views of political institutions of a different form?” (Fed. No. 45.)
The American answer, from the people of America assembled in the conventions that ratified that Fifth Article, was a clear and emphatic “No.” The Tory answer of the last five years, from our leaders and our governments, has been an insistent “Yes.”
No one, however, with any considerable degree of truthfulness, can assert that there has come from the American people themselves, during the last five years, any very audible “Yes.” To whatever extent individual opinions may differ as to the wisdom or legality of the new constitution of government of men, made entirely by governments, no unbiased observer has failed to note one striking fact. By a very extensive number of Americans otherwise law-abiding, Americans in all classes of society, the new government edict, the government command to “subjects,” has been greeted with a respect and obedience strikingly similar to the respect and obedience with which an earlier generation of Americans received
the Stamp Act and the other government edicts between 1765 and 1776.
When the Americans of that earlier generation were denounced by the government which had issued those edicts to its “subjects,” one of the latter, five years before Americans ceased to be “subjects” of that government, stated: “Is it a time for us to sleep when our free government is essentially changed, and a new one is forming upon a quite different system—a government without the least dependence upon the people?”
It may be but a coincidence that, while our American government was announcing its recognition of the wide-spread American disrespect for the new government edict, it is only a few days since throughout America there resounded many eulogies of the Samuel Adams, who made that statement in the Boston Gazette of October 7, 1771. In those eulogies, there was paid to him the tribute that he largely helped to bring about the amazing result of American desire for individual freedom which culminated in the assembling of the Americans in the “conventions” which ratified the proposed Constitution.
We have already sensed that the existence of the supposed Eighteenth Amendment depends entirely upon an amazing modern meaning put into the Fifth Article made in those conventions. Let us, therefore, who are Americans now educated in the experience of the Americans who assembled in those “conventions,” sit therein with them and there read the story and the language of the Fifth Article as they read it when they made it.
